• cucco
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-12-26
  • Posts: 5

Topic: FF800 and Glyph - Problems (Please help!!)

Hi guys -

A couple quick questions here...

I've been needing a better portable hard drive solution so I got a Glyph GT Key 051 that is FW800 (1394b) only.  My previous laptop firewire card is a Siig that is 1394a/FW400 only.  So, I got an adapter cable and ran both the FF800 and the Glyph on the same card (2 ports).

I was getting massive dropouts.  4-10 per second.  (I don't usually get dropouts, even for long, 2-hour or more concert events).

So, I got a new Siig FW1394b card, but it only has 1 fw800 input.  I'm trying to daisy chain the two devices, but everytime I plug the FF800 into the card, it doesn't recognize the hardware and tells me that it needs to install the drivers for:
000A3500131B5553

When I point it to the RME drivers, it indicates that these are not the right drivers and now I can't get the machine to recognize the RME FF800 anymore.  This has happened identically on two different laptops.

What's going on?!?!

Thanks in advance!!

Jeremy Cucco
Sublyme Records

  • cucco
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-12-26
  • Posts: 5

Re: FF800 and Glyph - Problems (Please help!!)

Okay...quick update:

I just did a more thorough search of this forum and may have answered my own question.
I'm using the Unibrain driver for the Siig card and apparently it is not compatible with the FF800.  However, when I switched back to the Windows driver, no problem.

The big question I have now (disregarding my previous questions) is:
Since the Windows drivers are only for FW400, what's the likelihood that I'm going to run out of speed/bandwidth?

Again, my Glyph and the FF800 are on the same buss and even on the same cable path.  Usually (60-70% of the time) I'm recording around 6 tracks at 24/44.1kHz.  However, I've been known to go up to 10 tracks at 24/176.4kHz or 20+ tracks at 24/88.2kHz. 

I've done the math on this and it does push the limits of the bus, but I'm looking for empirical evidence that it's possible.  I'd rather find out here then when I'm on location.

Cheers- again!
Jeremy

3 Reply by fl

  • fl
  • S/Mux specialist
  • Offline
  • From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Registered: 2007-11-12
  • Posts: 266

Re: FF800 and Glyph - Problems (Please help!!)

Do the makers of your Siig card make their own drivers?  You might want to see if there is some update there...  On the other hand, you might want to check in your Hardware Manager to see what the actual driver is in your 1394 Host Adapter - that might need an upgrade to handle FW800.  Also, do a search on this forum for references to SidSpeed - some Windows XP installations cause the default Firewire connection speed to revert to its slowest setting.  Adjusting this will restore full functionality to your Firewire connections.

If you're going to chain your devices off of one Firewire port, the hard drive should be between the computer and the Fireface - just about all DAWs like to work this way, and in fact, Digidesign stipulates that this is how to run Pro Tools with one of their Firewire interfaces (whether or not you're using Pro Tools, this is one instance of a DAW and hardware manufacturer stipulating how to set up a Firewire chain).

I, too, have a Glyph drive - one of the older 062 RAID drives.  While the drive is solid enough, the Glyph Manager 4 software I'm using is a little flaky with my XP SP3 installation, and I've found it's best to set its options so that it doesn't launch at boot up, or lurk in the Tool bar after closing the window - it really quits.  I don't know whether the use of this program is needed with one of their non-RAID drives, but I thought I'd mention it, in case it's installed on your system.

I've run some preliminary tests on my system to check for track counts and sample rate, and have found I can run 16 channel 48 kHz. sessions all day long with no problem - and this was with my Fireface connected to my computer's FW800 port and the Glyph drive connected to the FW400 port.  Recently, I've been investigating using higher sample rates, and have not run into problems running 16 channels at 96 kHz.  More channels than that exceeds my I/O capability, but I have set up sessions for playback - mixing down to two channel output - of more than 56 channels @ 48 kHz.  Everything appears to be well within spec, and all runs smoothly.  My DAW is Pyramix.

Frank Lockwood
https://LockwoodARS.com
Fireface 800, Firmware 2.77
Drivers: Win10, 3.125; Mac, 3.36

fl's Website

  • cucco
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-12-26
  • Posts: 5

Re: FF800 and Glyph - Problems (Please help!!)

Thanks Frank!
It looks like you do similar work to what I do, so I'm glad that you in particular could answer!
Yes, the Siig card uses its own drivers.  Sadly, I have the most recent version.  However, based on using the Windows driver yesterday, it looks like it will work.
Within the next week or so, I'll go crazy testing high track counts over long periods of time at high sample rates.  When done, I'll try to remember to report back.

The GTKey doesn't seem to have any software (thankfully), so it looks like I don't have to worry about that aspect yet.

Also, I'll definitely make sure that my chain has the HD in between the FF and the computer.

Thanks a bunch!
Jeremy